User talk:Macst34
Hi, welcome to Elements the Game Wiki! Thanks for your edit to the New Master Card List page. Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! -- KyleH (Talk) 11:30, August 27, 2009 Hi Macst34, I wanted to say thank you for your work on the card list. It's extremely helpful. :) -- 23:00, 29 August 2009 (UTC) Card list Hey mate. Have you checked Recent Changes in the past few days? You should guess what I plan to do ;) Chriskang 14:52, September 24, 2009 (UTC) :Sorry if I wasn't clear. Take a look at the source code of this page for an example. If you have questions, I'll be happy to answer them. And btw, you can write here, no need to go to my talk ;-) Chriskang 22:33, September 24, 2009 (UTC) your card list. your card list looks nice, however, you may need to do some checking on your numbers. That is what was taking me a long time..so long i came up with formulas for confirming correct buy/sell/upgrade and rare(sell) figures. take a look at my new pages off my home. especially the formula page and if you are interested, the flying weapons stats. i'll be updating my card list as I go along, however I am also asking for help from the users at large. --Macst34 23:06, September 24, 2009 (UTC) :I think you missed my point. Sorry mate, I'm really bad at explaining something in English (which is a foreign language for me). Let me try again. :So if you take a card like Pulverizer, its data (summon cost, effect, price, ...) are currently presented in 4 different places: Rares, Master Card List, New Master Card List and Pulverizer which is a nightmare to maintain and a huge waste of "editing power" (if it's not clear, I mean that wiki contributors have to work 4 times more in order to keep all those pages up to date). :If tomorrow some new contributor comes with a new formatting idea (let's say tabbed browsing for example) and creates a 5th version of the cards and then a 6th and a 7th... this wiki will become a complete mess, impossible to maintain. This is really a shame cause all those good pages should share their data in a single point and present them the way they want afterwards. :I see you're doing a great job on "New Master Card List" and I congratulate you a lot for that but the more you work on this page, the more other pages become obsolete. Of course, you could say you don't care but I'm sure you won't because we both want this wiki to be as good as possible and the only way to achieve this goal is to have all contributors working together (not each one on his own little page). :So the work I've done so far consists in creating a single database with all data in it and NO formatting. I'm using wiki templates to do that (if you're not familiar with this concept, let me know and I'll explain you). For example, go to Data/Pulverizer and click the "edit this page" button. You'll see that all data for the Pulverizer card are there but not a single line of formatting. :The great feature of templates is that they let you do whatever you want with the formatting once the data are correct. And all formatted pages are automatically updated when the database changes. For now, the data in the database can be displayed in 3 different ways and this number can be extended easily when people come with new ideas. The 3 available formats are and . You can see the render they produce here, here and here. If it's still not clear for you, let me insist another time: all those 3 pages share their informations from the database. If you change something in Data/Pulverizer and save the change (try it!), you'll see that the 3 pages are automatically updated (it might actually take a few minutes for technical reasons, but trust me it'll work). :The first format (Expanded) is designed to create pages specific to a given card. It's the most complete and I plan to add some room for comments there very soon. :The second one (Image Only) is a simple wrapper between card name and image. I used it as a base to create another template called Deck, that you can see in action here. Once again, check the source code of the page by clicking the "edit" button and you'll see how easy it is for contributors to use it. :At last, the third format (Table Block) is an obvious copy of all the "master lists" that exist everywhere on the wiki and is designed to replace them all once the database is ready. :The benefits will be huge: :*easier maintainability (have you checked the source code of Card_List/Others as I told you before?) :*automatic update of all those pages when something changes in the database :*perfect consistency of the layout from top to bottom of the pages :*possibility to change the format of all items in the page in just one small edit (of the format model) :I hope you understand my point this time and why it is really important for now to have to best possible database before trying to format the data in some way. :Thanks to your great work on New Master Card List, I've already been able to fill the database with a lot of content and as you pointed out before, the only information that is really missing now is sell price. :I'll probably try to check your formulas for prices in the next few days and add them to my database. The flying weapons are in my scope too, I'm sure your screenshot will help a lot. :Hope you understand everything. Sorry for my bad english. :Chriskang 11:15, September 25, 2009 (UTC) new work on templates. Hi Chris, Initially, I did get to see some of your work but did not readily grasp what you presented before. Your explanation goes far to explain what you are presenting and why you are excited about. I like the work that you have done and I am sure that it will help the community at large get better access to the information. I will be feeding more information into the new master card list page and perhaps we can have a discussion on how best to display and organize the information. I suggest that we also employ a section for tags for each card. for example, tags that I think are suitable include 'permanent, pillar, artifact, spell, creature, rare, upgraded, weapon, sheild' (etc) depending on which tags are set, the tempate can be different since there is no reason to add extra info when it is not needed (ie. there's never attack information for sheilds or buy information for rares) this transition period is going to be messy, but I think that the end result could be great. you may want to create an article explaining 'templates' and the framework that you've chosen so that people like me who haven't worked with them before, get the idea and not break things while trying to help the effort. You can add a list of current templates that are utilized to make the magic happen. good job and thanks, --Macst34 11:33, September 25, 2009 (UTC) :Many answers to give here. So: :*The tags you suggest are already included in my template parameters. For example, the "Type" parameter in Data/Pulverizer can take values "Creature", "Spell", "Pillar", "Weapon", "Shield" or "Artifact" (no need for a generic "Permanent" cause permanents are all of one of the last 4 types). The rarity information is already present too and the upgraded status. With just parameters and no tag, templates are able to change the final layout. If you check carefully Card List/Others, you'll see that rare cards have your black "rare" icon on them. That's because my template is already designed to show this icon when the "Rare" parameter is set to "yes" in the database. Similarly, the "damage/life" information is only displayed when it is relevant. :*I'll write the article you suggest this week-end with everything you need to know to work efficiently. :*As a start point, I invite you to read : http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Templates and http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:ParserFunctions. Both are intensively used in my templates. :*After this read, you can head to Template:Card Display Table Block, which is the point where the formatting to "your style" is done. Try changing a few things in the source code and see what happens, that's the best way to learn. :-) :Chriskang 12:24, September 25, 2009 (UTC) Price check So I was finally able to figure the price levels by myself without much difficulty. Can you please check if everything is correct here. Chriskang 23:55, September 25, 2009 (UTC) How do you feel about adding the hidden fields of 'level' and 'card id' ? --Macst34 16:25, September 26, 2009 (UTC) :Price level was already added to the database yesterday evening (that's how I get the preceding table). :Not sure about 'card id', what would be the benefit? :Chriskang 17:08, September 26, 2009 (UTC) well, it would allow sorting of the cards to the order that is within the game. --Macst34 20:59, September 26, 2009 (UTC) Afaik Mediawiki doesn't allow sorting at all, unless you install an extension called DPL. We may try to ask Pilchard but I don't think it is possible to install those kind of extensions on wikia. So for sorting we have no other choice than doing it manually (and for this purpose we don't need 'card id' to be in the templates). Chriskang 21:39, September 26, 2009 (UTC) :Btw, does it mean you want the master card list to be reordered according to card ids? I'm not sure it would be wise. Having the rare weapon at the end of each element seems clearer to me. Chriskang 09:36, September 27, 2009 (UTC) i guess i was planning to put the weapons according to the way they show up in the bazaar/your deck pages. I am not sure why the game puts the weapons in that order, but with the 'rare' icon it should not be that figure out. I am open to different orderings though. it should be trivial after the templates that you have introduced. Flying weapon stats You missed Fahrenheit and Fahrenheit (elite) in you image ;-) Chriskang 13:28, September 28, 2009 (UTC)